Economy Over Liberty, Jiang Says China Leader Firm That Needs Transcend Personal Freedoms

Serene as he faced some of his harshest critics, President Jiang Zemin remained unapologetic Thursday, arguing that civil liberties in China are less important than food and clothing.

Other human rights are “out of the question,” he said, until China’s economic goals have been fulfilled.

In separate talks with members of Congress and China specialists, Jiang responded head-on to American criticism of China’s human rights record. He asserted that Tibet, the scene of well-documented political and religious repression, is home to people “living and working in happiness and contentment.”

For Jiang, who visited Philadelphia before ending his day in New York, the final hours of his state visit to Washington amounted to an unruffled defense of China, its place in the world and its treatment of its citizens.

The Chinese leader promised during a luncheon address to Asian scholars to “further enlarge democracy.” He pledged greater opportunity for creativity and a future with democratic elections, although the Chinese Communist concept of democracy differs from the American version.

Fifty members of the House and Senate gave the unflappable Chinese leader mixed reviews after meeting with him for an hour and 45 minutes in the Capitol earlier in the day.

Senate Minority Leader Thomas Daschle, D-S.D., called some of Jiang’s answers candid and others evasive, while Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., called the dialogue “encouraging.”

House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., sounded the most conciliatory.

“President Jiang’s comments about democracy and the rule of law and the direction they’re trying to move in is very encouraging,” said Gingrich, who accepted Jiang’s invitation to visit Tibet in August 1998.

“There was no defense here of dictatorship. There was no defense of censorship,” Gingrich continued. “There was a sense of a very hard problem of moving a nation of 1.3 billion people toward freedom.”

House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, handed Jiang a letter listing the names of 30 imprisoned Chinese Christians whom Armey said are being persecuted for religious reasons. He asked Jiang to examine the cases and release the prisoners “at the earliest possible moment.”

On human rights, Jiang has made the Chinese case for iron-fisted stability over free expression before, but his lunchtime remarks to the gathering of foreign policy specialists and business leaders were notable for their boldness in the face of contrary evidence.

Jiang asserted again that China aims to develop “socialist democracy with Chinese characteristics.” He said China protects the rights of ethnic minorities, and permits them to “keep and reform” their customs.

China will “never seek” dominance abroad, he said. At home, he declared, “respecting man’s dignity and value is a time-honored virtue of the Chinese people.” As he did in a startling public exchange with Clinton on Wednesday, Jiang said human rights are a matter of evolution and cannot be dictated or judged by outsiders.

Jiang’s remarks about Tibet were dramatic. In essence, he said Tibet was a “theocracy with a heavy tint of slavery” before the Chinese People’s Liberation Army occupied the mountainous land in 1950. He likened China’s “democratic” reforms to Abraham Lincoln’s freeing of the slaves.

Human rights groups and the State Department paint a dramatically different portrait.

In contrast to Jiang’s reference to “happiness and contentment,” the State Department said China continued last year “to commit widespread human rights abuses in Tibet, including instances of death in detention, torture, arbitrary arrest.and intensified controls on religion and on freedom of speech and the press, particularly for ethnic Tibetans.”